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Sunday, 18 February 2018

Wormwood is a six-part series that Morris created for Netflix. If you have not watched it, you should. You should certainly watch it before you read what I have written; you should watch it in the most complete state of blissful ignorance that you can achieve.

“Goddammit!” you curse. “I clicked here because I have five minutes to waste reading a superficially amusing pseudo-intelligent article — not six hours to watch a documentary! I’ll watch the damn film later, but right now I want something to read!”

Fine: go and read the other stuff I wrote about Errol Morris. You will find my review of his Stephen Hawking documentary, “A Brief History of Time”, both entertaining and thoughtful. If you prefer scathing reviews, I recommend my review of the more recent (non-Morris) Hawking drama, “The Theory of Everything”, which was such a forgettable mediocrity that spoilers can hardly make it worse; its only redeeming feature is that it started me on my Errol Morris kick in the first place. You may be irritated that my article on Morris’s career is framed as a faux-profound insight into life choices, but I guarantee that the gems of his biography will make up for it. And finally, we get down to what I consider the most fascinating aspect of Errol Morris, his dogged devotion to Truth. I also wrote about that, and, Yes indeed, there were more profound insights.